Film

Soldier on

Lone Survivor

Lone Survivor, an explosive passion project from writerdirector Peter Berg, takes an unrelentingly gruesome look at Operation Red Wings, the failed 2005 Afghanistan mission that claimed the lives of 19 American soldiers. As autopsies and first-hand witness accounts have revealed, 16 soldiers died when a Taliban RPG struck their helicopter and sent them crashing into cliffs. Three of the deaths were Navy SEALs killed by bullets and the rugged countryside tearing them apart. Most of the movie centers on the four Navy SEALs dropped into hostile territory, and how an unfortunate civilian encounter and communications problems led to a massive gun battle of insurmountable odds. In a performance that stands among his best, Mark Wahlberg plays Marcus Luttrell, the Navy SEAL who co-wrote the book this movie is based upon (the real Luttrell actually has a cameo early in the film, and acted as a consultant). Luttrell, along with Navy SEALs Michael Murphy (Taylor Kitsch), Danny Dietz (Emile Hirsch) and Matt Axelson (Ben Foster), were performing reconnaissance for a mission meant to capture or kill a notorious Taliban leader when a trio of goat herders stumbled upon their camp. In a powerfully acted scene, the four men debate whether or not they should let these prisoners go or “terminate the compromise.” Their decision ultimately leads to a skirmish wherein they are far outnumbered. This is where Berg and his stunt and effects crew really go to work. Aided in part by Greg Nicotero, who does the makeup effects for The Walking Dead, Berg shows injury after injury as a true horror show. When the actors take hits in this movie, Berg and the performers make it all look and sound very real and extremely painful.

This is especially true during two sequences where the SEALs must evade bullets by jumping off cliffs. These plummets feature stuntmen crashing into rocks and trees with a ferocity that looks positively deadly. Berg injects edits of the actual actors falling as well, making the progression down the cliff by Bob Grimm seamless. There’s a story circulating, told by both bgrimm@ Wahlberg and Berg, that the first stuntman newsreview.com to leap off a cliff for Lone Survivor broke a bunch of ribs, punctured his lung, and had 4 to be airlifted off the set. When you actually see how jarringly realistic this movie is in its depiction of the tortures these men went through, you’ll be shocked the stunt guy’s injuries weren’t worse. The last act of the film depicts how some sympathetic Afghani villagers found one of the SEALs and sheltered him from Taliban forces until Americans arrived. Don’t think this part of the film represents anything near relief, because the SEAL endures plenty of pain and near death episodes during this stretch, as well. This is one of the best acting ensembles of 2013. Wahlberg leads the group with solid, reliable fury sprinkled with the occasional and much needed humorous touch. Kitsch, who headlined the Berg stinker Battleship the same year he starred in the ill-fated John Carter, experiences a complete career resurrection in this movie. He’s a strong, sympathetic presence as Murphy. Hirsch, who was so good in the recent

Don’t mess with the Funky Bunch.

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Prince Avalanche and The Motel Life, breaks hearts as Dietz, who loses his drawing hand during battle. Foster is perhaps the most powerful of the bunch as a man who actually gets shot in the head yet keeps on fighting.

Lone Survivor pulverizes the senses, for sure. It also features good actors at the top of their games giving the film the sort of emotional anchor sorely missing in too many military based movies.

The men depicted in Lone Survivor don’t die waving American flags accompanied by “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” They die some of the hardest, loneliest deaths you will ever see in a movie. Ω

excellent 4 American Hustle David O. Russell continues his impressive directorial roll with this semicomedic look at the notorious ’70s Abscam scandal. This is basically Russell shooting for Scorsese glory here, and while the style of the movie seems copied at times, there’s no denying the power of the ensemble cast. Bradley Cooper scores laughs as a pathetic FBI agent looking to make a name for himself, and Christian Bale looks great in a comb-over as the conman forced into an alliance with the law. Amy Adams gets one of the strangest roles of the year as a con artist pretending to be British, and she pulls it off quite nicely, while Jennifer Lawrence steals her every scene as a seemingly dim Long Island housewife. You also get stand up comic Louis C.K. as Cooper’s field boss. (C.K. canceled a show I had tickets for to make this movie. I was pissed but, after seeing how good he is here, I’m OK with it now.) The film falls a little short of greatness due to its sometimes carbon copy feel, but the cast pulls it out of the fire. It also has the best use of Robert De Niro as a bad guy in many years.

3August: Osage County Tracy Letts’ play comes to the big screen with a big cast featuring Julia Roberts, Meryl Streep, Ewan McGregor, Chris Cooper and more. After a family tragedy, a group of sisters and their men return home to Texas and their dying mother (Streep). Mother was mean when they were growing up, and she remains mean in her dying days, much to the annoyance of daughter Barbara (Roberts), whose doing her best not to follow in mother’s footsteps. The cast is strong, with most of them turning in great work, including Juliette Lewis doing her first truly good acting in a long while. The lone exception would be Benedict Cumberbatch playing the slow sibling. He’s just all wrong for the part. The movie is super dark and ugly and full of people acting like true jerks. While the story isn’t anything all that new, the cast makes it worth seeing based on the power of their performances.

4Dallas Buyers Club Matthew McConaughey continues his career resurgence in this film based on the life of Ron Woodroof, a man who tested HIV positive in the ’80s, and had to battle the FDA while smuggling non-approved drugs into the country for himself and fellow sufferers. McConaughey lost many pounds to look the part, and it’s a frightening transformation. He also delivers an incredible performance. This, combined with his work earlier this year in Mud, easily establishes 2013 as the best year of his career. Jared Leto does incredible work as Rayon, a crossdresser who helps Woodroof distribute the drugs to those needing some sort of treatment. Director Jean-Marc Vallee does a good job of capturing a time where HIV was a death sentence, and the terror that surrounded those who were fighting for their lives. This is a very good movie with great performances.

3Frozen I have to admit I was more into the strange Mickey Mouse short that precedes this musical adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Snow Queen” than the actual feature. It features retro Mickey busting out of a black and white film and becoming 3-D as he battles a bad guy kidnapping Minnie. It’s worth the price of admission. As for the actual feature movie, Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel have wonderful voices, and the visuals are fun to behold in this middle-of-the-road Disney fare. It has a lot of music—some of it quite good, some of it, well, not—and a beautiful look to it. For recent Disney animation, my vote goes to Tangled for best, but that’s not to say this one is a letdown. It’s OK. Just OK. It’s about on par with Pixar’s latest, Monster’s University. It’s fun to watch, but not altogether memorable. 5 Her Spike Jonze wrote and directed this beautiful love story about a man smitten with his computer’s operating system (voiced by a lovely Scarlett Johansson). Johansson does mesmerizing voice work as Samantha, a Siri-like voice operating system that is so charming, her new owner (Joaquin Phoenix) finds her far more interesting than actual humans. She makes you believe a man could fall in love with his computer. Jonze, who wrote the screenplay, has made a futuristic movie that looks and feels realistic, creating a future land where it’s just perfectly OK to date your computer. He approaches the topic seriously, and somehow manages to make it all work. The movie not only looks beautiful, as Jonze films often do, but sounds great thanks to a soundtrack from Arcade Fire. Phoenix turns in some of the finest acting of his career.

5Inside Llewyn Davis The 1961 Greenwich Village folk music scene is the rich setting for the latest Coen brothers triumph, the brilliant Inside Llewyn Davis. Featuring a knockout performance from Oscar Isaac as the title character, and the usual topnotch writing and directing from brothers Joel and Ethan, it’s easily one of the year’s best films. The movie, loosely based on the life of late folk singer Dave Van Ronk, follows Llewyn as he surfs couches with somebody’s orange tabby in tow, sporting a pretty bad attitude after the loss of a friend. Carey Mulligan plays the married woman he may’ve impregnated, and she does beautiful things with reserved rage. John Goodman is stellar as a jazz musician in the back seat of a car Llewyn travels in as he heads to Chicago for the audition of his life. The cast is full of rich Coen characters played by the likes of Justin Timberlake, F. Murray Abraham, Adam Driver and Max Casella. Isaac and the cast do their own guitar playing and singing, with Isaac being especially impressive during his solo numbers. As with all Coen movies, this looks amazing, and features great laughs mixed with the somber tones. I couldn’t love these guys more.

4Saving Mr. Banks Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson are charming as Walt Disney and Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers in this obviously whitewashed look at Disney’s attempts at getting Travers’ approval to make a movie out of her book. Of course, most of us know he succeeded, but many don’t know that Travers was quite the holdout. The movie splits time between the Disney/Travers business and Travers’ childhood, where we find out much of Mary Poppins was based on her troubled father (Colin Farrell) and actual nanny. B.J. Novak and Jason Schwartzman are wonderful as the Sherman brothers, who made Poppins into a musical, much to the chagrin of Travers. The movie takes a lot of artistic license with the situation. Even though Travers is depicted as difficult here, she was far more adversarial in real life and never approved of the movie (those animated penguins!). Still, the film is fun to watch, with Hanks and Thompson making it all very worthwhile and heartwarming.

5The Wolf of Wall Street Martin Scorsese’s latest explodes in your face like a mortar full of deranged bliss. Leonardo DiCaprio, in the performance of the year, plays slimeball stockbroker and convicted felon Jordan Belfort, a real life scumbag who made millions selling penny stocks at a Long Island, New York brokerage. The movie, based on Belfort’s own autobiography, takes people doing bad, bad things to such an extreme that the film doesn’t just stand as one of the best of 2013, but one of its best and most deranged comedies. Like Ray Liotta in Goodfellas, DiCaprio talks to the camera on occasion, often during the sort of highly elaborate tracking shots that have become a Scorsese mainstay. It’s in these moments, and during Belfort’s drug-fueled “rouse-the-troops, fire-breathing speeches to his crew, where DiCaprio does his most exhilarating, bona fide nuts acting to date. He is a formidable competitor for a Best Actor Oscar. He’s certainly my pick.